Today, thanks to the prominence of online marketing, there are more marketing options for law firms than ever before. This is typically a good thing, but it also presents two unique challenges.
First, your competitors are already saturating the market by utilizing these strategies on their own, making it harder for you to get the visibility you need to earn new clients. Second, the sheer number of possibilities can lead to analysis paralysis, and make it difficult to choose what to start with.
As experts in law firm marketing, we’ve filtered out some of the less effective law firm marketing strategies to present the most cost-effective and results-oriented tactics to integrate into your campaign.
The Best Law Firm Marketing Strategies
These are some of the best law firm marketing strategies to use, both in terms of efficiency and bottom-line results:
1. Search engine optimization (SEO).
These days, the majority of prospective legal clients turn to Google as their first resource. They search for lawyers directly, or search for information on their primary legal concern; either way, if you’re the first law firm they see, there’s a good chance they’re going to contact you. SEO is a collection of strategies law firms can use to rank higher in search engines. These strategies tend to be inexpensive, relatively speaking, and provide long-term value, since once you earn a higher rank in Google, it doesn’t take much maintenance to keep it. Best of all, the strategies you’ll use for SEO work well as marketing strategies of their own, so you can multiply your marketing campaign’s value immediately.
2. Blogging.
Blogging is a practical necessity for any SEO strategy, but it also holds value of its own. Writing blogs is a great way to optimize your site for keywords you’re trying to rank for, while also attracting more external links (which can boost your site’s authority). Blogs are also your chance to show off your legal expertise; while you can’t offer direct legal advice, you can offer legal information, which your audience can find useful. Blog posts are also great chances to include calls-to-action (CTAs), which encourage your readers to contact your law firm for more information.
3. Link building.
Another vital component of SEO is link building—the process of earning or placing links pointing back to pages of your site. These links gradually improve your domain and page authority, which serve as relative scores of your trustworthiness, which in turn help you rank higher for various keyword terms. Link building is more than a mere SEO tool, however. It’s also valuable for getting more brand exposure, especially in high-authority external publications, and can generate significant streams of referral traffic to your site.
4. Onsite optimization.
Onsite optimization can refer to a wide variety of strategies, but they all have the goal of making your website better in some way. You’ll often find it referenced in SEO discussions, since it’s possible to tweak your site to look better in the “eyes” of Google and other search engines. However, you can also optimize your site for usability, such as making it more mobile friendly, or optimize it for conversions, so you can get more leads and prospects.
5. Social media marketing.
There’s also social media marketing. While it won’t aid your SEO strategy directly, it can help you support almost any other marketing strategy. It’s your chance to develop your personal brands, your law firm’s brand, and engage with your target demographics. Used correctly, it can help you build an audience, popularize your best content, and demonstrate your authority by answering audience questions. Stay active and use multiple channels to get the most bang for your buck here.
6. Email marketing.
Despite being one of the “older” online marketing strategies, email marketing has held up incredibly well. It remains one of the highest-ROI (return on investment) marketing strategies available because it costs next to nothing to run a campaign. Email marketing capitalizes on your existing audience or readership, sending them new blog posts or information about your law firm on a regular basis, and encouraging them to engage with your brand in one way or another.
7. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
SEO and its related online marketing strategies are the best long-term marketing strategies you can invest in, and they offer an amazing ROI—but they do take time to develop. If you’re looking for faster results, or if you want to complement those strategies, you could invest in PPC advertising, paying a fixed rate for every click you get to your site in a given medium. It’s a good opportunity to generate traffic immediately, especially if you design custom landing pages to capitalize on those unique audiences.
8. Video marketing.
Videos are gradually becoming the preferred content medium online, and they’re easier to make than you think. Putting together an interview with a prominent lawyer in your firm, or using a video to provide legal information could help you showcase your authority while capitalizing on an audience who prefers watching videos to reading articles. Plus, you can optimize your videos for search engines to get even more views and visits to your site.
9. PR and public visibility.
Finally, you’ll want to spend some time on your public relations strategy. Different law firms may take different approaches here; at a minimum, you’ll want to write and syndicate a press release for your law firm on a regular basis. It’s also beneficial to practice corporate social responsibility (CSR) and get involved in public speaking.
Making Your Law Firm Marketing Work
Your law firm’s marketing campaign isn’t dependent on picking a strategy and mastering it. Instead, it’s about utilizing multiple complementary strategies together, in a way that allows them to complement and enhance each other. You need a big-picture campaign to stitch these tactics together, driven by a consistent brand and a vision for the future.
Ideally, you’ll work with a marketing firm that specializes in working with law firms. They’ll be able to help you form a high-level strategy, and will offer multiple marketing services in tandem, so you can see your results improve together, with a reliably consistent execution.
Contact us today to learn more about how SEO.co can help your law firm succeed in this highly competitive—yet opportunity-rich age for law firm marketing.
Sam Edwards
He is a recurring speaker at the Search Marketing Expo conference series and a TEDx Talker. Today he works directly with high-end clients across all verticals to maximize on and off-site SEO ROI through content marketing and link building.